The new release of Neo4j OGM (Object Graph Mapping) introduces several exciting features, including revamped connection mechanisms with drivers, performance improvements, and bug fixes. The drivers mechanism provides an abstraction over different types of connections to Neo4j, making testing easier and allowing for the use of embedded instances as well as remote instances. Performance improvements include a refactored Cypher statement generator that supports multi-statement queries, resulting in significant speed boosts when persisting large object graphs. Additionally, the new release introduces support for mapping custom query results to domain entities, which will make it easier to deal with the results of custom queries and improve performance. The update also includes several bug fixes, including retrying HTTP requests and fixing connection leaks.